


Aftermath

by Splintered_Star



Category: Once Upon A Time (In Space) (Album)
Genre: Angst, Female Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, but not as depressing as the album is tbh, vaguely defined magic abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-21 14:31:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7390966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splintered_Star/pseuds/Splintered_Star
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cinders and Snow, and the grief they share between them. It doesn't get any easier to deal with, but at least it doesn't get any worse. (Except when it does.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [veleda_k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veleda_k/gifts).



Cinders walks into the blaster-scarred building as she has walked into every important moment in her life - with certainty thrumming in her bones, her soul humming the tune of mostly-dead magic.  She's on some half dead hunk of rock in the periphery, the name of which Cinders hasn't bothered to learn. All that matters is that Rose Red is not here.   
  
It turns out that someone else is.   
  
Cinders walks in unmolested by the guards and sits down at a table in the corner of the room, a chair waiting as if she was expected.  Across from her, Snow White looks up from her tablet and then looks back down.  It is not a dismissal. It is not anything else.   
  
"This is all my -" Cinders starts, but Snow glares at her.   
  
"Don't."  She growls, and she is General White, slowly making a name for herself in the outer rims for her passion and ruthlessness. "This is Cole's fault and don't you dare think otherwise." And then, suddenly, she's Snow again, awkward and stiff and not quite knowing how to smile at her almost-sister-in-law. Cinders' burned-out heart clenches.    
  
She may have survived her sister's wedding, but Snow was dying slowly, crushed under the weight of General White.   
  
"Look." Snow takes a draw on her cigarette. She never smoked, before. She looks to the side and won't meet Cinders' eyes.  "I know we've never gotten along. Trust me, Rose and I fought over it often enough. But she loved you. You made her happy." Smoke billows out of her mouth, as harsh as her voice. "Save your anger for the bastard who deserves it."   
  
Snow speaks, Cinder knows with a spike of Knowledge, as much to herself as to anyone else. Still, it is a forgiveness she did not expect to receive. Too bitter to be a gift, and yet.   
  
"'Loves'," Cinders says, not quite a correction, and closes her hands over her wedding ring. She wears it on a chain under her shirt, most days, but today it hangs outside and visible. She did not know why she did not hide it, but now she does.  "Rose Red still lives." Snow raises her eyebrows, but Cinders only says, "I would know, otherwise."   
  
Snow stares for a moment, as if thinking of objecting to the magic that bound her sister and her love together, doubting the gifts of a long-dead godmother. Cinders doesn't blame her. The magic in her bloodline wasn't enough to stop Cole, after all. But then Snow nods, stiff and quick.   
  
"...If Rose is alive," Snow starts, her voice strangled and her fingers clenching around her cigarette.   
  
"I will find her." Cinders says, before Snow can think of abandoning her crusade to save her sister. "Fight your war, bring peace and freedom to the galaxy. We will not be safe until you do." A spark of bravery lights in the ashes of her heart, and Cinders takes her almost-kin's hand. "I will find her, and bring her to you, and we will take down Cole together." Cinders hasn't smiled since her wedding, but she tries. "Rose will probably enjoy the challenge."   
  
Snow stares down at their joined hands. The noise she makes is too strangled and weak to be laughter, but Snow squeezes Cinders' hand.   
  
"Yeah," she finally says, and for a moment she is fully Snow, General White banished - not even the Snow that Cinders knew before, but the one Rose talked about, sometimes, the one who made friends with sparrows and laughed freely, smiled without hesitation. "Rose'll like that."   
  
It's not healing. It can't be. But it is a gap in the suffering, and that is something. Not enough, but Cinders will take what she can get.   
  
  
  
Cinders enters the Resistance base without bothering to check where it is. The soldiers hardly notice her entrance, too drunk on alcohol and their first victory over Cole's new army. There is cheering and friendly wrestling and the smell of beer splattered everywhere, a warm and welcoming miasma in the air.   
  
Snow - General White - is not among them. Cinders doesn't bother to look.   
  
Cinders was there when Cole's new Rose Red Battalion were first deployed. She was there when the banners went live above the battle field, there when legions of identical soldiers burst out from their transport carriers and began razing the battlefield. She had no reason to be on that planet. She hadn't even planned to stop there.   
  
Destiny is a monster.   
  
Cinders lets herself into General White's office. She thought about bringing a wine that Rose said, once, that her sister liked, but couldn't decide if it would bring comfort or injury. She isn't sure why she's here, either, doesn't know what comfort she can offer or seek here. But she knows, as she has always Known, that this is where she needs to be.   
  
Snow looks up from her battered couch and waves a glass, half in greeting and half in dismissal. The glass is full something much stronger than the watered down beer the soldiers are enjoying. Snow takes a long drink of it and shifts on the couch, making room for Cinders to sit down.   
  
Cinders does, settling next to her almost-kin in silence. She's not sure there's anything to say. No mere words can change the truth.   
"I'd offer you a drink," Snow finally drawls, staring into the distance. Her voice is rough from smoking. A half-healed scar peeks out from her shirt collar, and a matching set crosses both forearms.  "But I only have the one glass. I broke the rest of them."   
  
Cinders huffs something too weak to be a laugh, trying to smile even though she can't anymore. The silence, now broken, does not refreeze around them. The sounds of celebration trickle through the gaps around the door frame. The soldiers think this is a victory. It is, and it isn't, and Snow and Cinders are the only ones that know.   
  
Perhaps this is why she is here, then, this is what she has come to give and receive: not words, but knowledge. Not healing, because some things do not heal, but something shared between them nonetheless.   
  
"...they all have her face," Snow finally mumbles, half a glass of alcohol and silence later. Cinders doesn't have to ask what she means, but Snow says anyway. "The soldiers. Perfect clones, every one of them. They even smile like she did," Snow says, gesturing with her free hand, "You know, all dimples and teeth and..."   
  
Cinders does know. Cinders remembers falling in love with that smile a dozen times over, being drawn to bed with nothing more than that smile and a teasing wink. Cinders imagines having to fight, kill someone with that smile, and something on the inside of her chest crumbles.   
  
"...you're so much stronger than I am," Cinders finally says. Snow snorts, and the sound turns into something much to hysterical to be called laughter.   
  
"I'm not strong," Snow finally says, catching her breath.  "I'm just angry." Snow pants and her breath is cracking of great glaciers, glass shattering under an impact, something breaking that cannot be fixed. "I'm angry and I'm /helpless/ and the only way I can change any of this is to kill my sister over and over and over and -" her voice finally breaks and her calloused hands fist in her own black hair. The noise she makes is either a sob or a scream and maybe both.   
  
Cinders thinks, blindingly certain and grieving, that she has just watched Snow die.   
  
General White remains sitting there, as black as space and as pale as ashes. For a long stretch of silence, she is emptiness and aftermath, soot and dust. Cinders took her name from what war could do to a world, and she knows what she sees now.   
  
Perhaps that is why she came: so that Snow would not have to die alone.   
  
General White looks up, her hands loosening from her hair , and in the back of her dark eyes Cinders can see the slow collapse of stars. What burns there is nothing so easily managed or transient as rage, nothing so tame as grief.  It is not madness. It is not anything else. It is a singularity.   
  
"Cole will burn." General White says, very calmly, and Cinders' bones ache with the truth of it.   
  
  
  
Cinders walks through the wreckage and bloodshed of Constantinople without concern. No weapons have threatened her, no guards have noticed her. She is a ghost and blends in with the ashes of this world. If she has fear it is a distant thing, hazy like the smoke floating around her.   
  
Her fear and her grief, her exhaustion and her sore muscles - all of these are buried in a thick insulating layer of Knowledge and weighed down by her blood red wedding ring. She walks on a path of destiny and magic, stepping over burnt corpses and through downed buildings on instinct.   
  
Her Bride is here. There is a hook in her rib cage, lodged against her heart, and it is tugging her towards Rose Red, pulling her forward and down.   
  
She meets her sister-in-law at the gates of Cole's palace. General White has a cybernetic eye, new since the last time they met, one gun slung around her back and another in her hand. Blood soaks into her clothing and drips from the butt of her gun. She might be wounded but she clearly doesn't care. There are at least two dozen soldiers behind her, as bloody and grim as she.   
  
White meets Cinders' eyes. She doesn't look surprised. She nods towards Cinders' wedding ring, glowing red and vibrant even in a landscape painted in blood and flame.   
  
"She's here, then."    
  
Cinders nods, once, though it was not a question. "Not in the upper palace," she says, not knowing where the Knowledge comes from but accepting it as true nonetheless.  She is as sure as she was when she saw Rose Red through the bars, as sure as she was on her wedding day. "Down. There's another entrance. I can show you."   
  
General White doesn't ask how she knows. She's stopped questioning how Cinders knows these things - battlefield efficiency doesn't care about reasons as much useful intel. Magic is just another tool.   
  
"Lead on." She says, and the warriors behind her fall in line. Someone offers Cinders a gun, but she waves it away. She will not die without seeing her Bride again. She does not need any protection beyond that Truth.   
  
This is where everything changes, Cinders thinks as she walks unerringly to the other entrance.  Then again, it's been three decades since that thought was a comfort.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a Lot of Emotions about Snow.


End file.
